


new traditions

by bornes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (s), Christmas, Christmas Tree, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bornes/pseuds/bornes
Summary: At noon on the twentieth of December, Bucky rolls over on the couch and asks, “When are we gonna do the decorations?”Steve, half slipped into a food coma due his inability to stop eating once there’s still food on his plate, and Bucky’s inability to calculate raw pasta portion size correctly, says, “Whuh?”





	new traditions

**Author's Note:**

> so i decided to write a christmas fic because i personally fuck with this festive season so very heavily, and i feel like bucky would too

Bucky’s identity has been stolen.

Not in the legal sense, because as far as the government knows, the assassin formerly known as the Winter Soldier is long dead and gone anyway – but in the sense of his personality. Of who he is.

He sips his hot chocolate as he contemplates this loss of self.

The earliest Christmas he can remember is one when he was maybe eight. Starting with that year and comparing it to every year after that, before Hydra had gotten their grubby paws on him and his brain, Bucky had been annoyingly festive. He liked Christmas. He liked carols and snow and the sugary food he was allowed to gorge himself on and the high spirits in the air and using his saved-up pocket money to buy some new pencils for Steve to draw with.

And now – and _now_ , it’s like his Christmas spirit has been leached out of him by osmosis and dispersed into the world around him. And he’s not going to use words like _Christmas spirit_ aloud, so he’s mostly been stewing in silence ever since mid-November when the world collectively decided it was time to deck every single one of the goddamn halls right now immediately. He’s never seen anything like Christmas in the twenty-first century; the lights, ornaments, the gifts, the gigantic tree in the middle of the Rockefeller centre that towers above him and mocks him every time he sees it. It has him walking around a daze. 

Things just get more and more jolly with each passing week, Christmas ads everywhere creating mass consumerist hysteria and he ignores it until he can’t ignore it, and it’s like a dam of realisation bursts and Bucky realises he doesn’t _want_ to ignore it, not anymore.

At noon on the twentieth of December, Bucky rolls over on the couch and asks, “When are we gonna do the decorations?”

Steve, half slipped into a food coma due his inability to stop eating once there’s still food on his plate, and Bucky’s inability to calculate raw pasta portion size correctly, says, “Whuh?”

“The decorations,” Bucky says, resting his chin in his hand. “For Christmas,” he elaborates as Steve continues to squint at him, one cheek squished up against the couch cushion.

Steve slowly absorbs Bucky’s words, and his eyes open a little wider, focusing. “Christmas,” he repeats, looking dumbfounded. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “There’s decorations all over the city and the Tower. But here we are. Completely lacking in festive décor.”

“Right,” Steve says, his cheek much less smushed. He’s sat up now, looking a little frantic. “Right, I just– I had no idea you wanted to celebrate, we didn’t do anything last year–”

“Last year you had just brought me in and I was mostly focused on clinging to my three remaining braincells that hadn’t been fried off by Nazis in the sixties,” Bucky tells him truthfully. “This year, I want a turkey.”

It’s nice to _want_ , and to have the capacity and space to do it. When Steve had first brought him home, Bucky’s list of wants started and ended with weapons. It slowly progressed into ‘weapons and Steve’, but he’d hit a wall there for a while. The list is a lot longer and diverse now. He wants to pull Christmas crackers. He wants to make a wish with a wishbone. He wants to drink eggnog, whatever that is. 

Steve looks suddenly fiercely determined, blue eyes blazing. “And you’ll get a turkey,” he declares. He curls around Bucky, giant limbs tucking him against his warm, solid chest. 

“Jeez, Steve,” Bucky says into Steve’s cleavage, enjoying being cradled, but also enjoying making fun of Steve. “Turkeys really do it for you, huh?”

Steve scoots down a little to press a series of sloppy kisses to Bucky’s jaw, rubbing their faces together so Steve’s beard drags all over his cheeks on _purpose_ , the asshole. “Get that thing _away_ ,” Bucky demands, laughing uncontrollably despite himself. “I am not walking around with beard burn on my face again.”

“Thought you like the beard. Said it makes me look manly and rugged,” Steve says against his neck.

“I said it makes you look like a sexy reclusive lumberjack,” Bucky corrects him. “Which it does but God, at what cost?” he laments. 

 

***

 

The trip to the butcher’s an hour later is intense. Steve is armed with his shopping list and they’re both wrapped from head to toe in scarves, gloves and various other thermal garments on account of it being cold as tits outside, Steve’s words. Only Bucky’s eyes and the tip of his reddened nose are visible through the layers. 

Steve’s read something online in preparation, an article about Finding the Right Turkey for You, so Bucky leaves him to interrogate the butcher, who is a middle-aged balding man who looks like he recognises Steve and doesn’t know how to react to a national icon questioning him about the class of his poultry. Steve’s all business, practically standing at parade rest. Bucky feels a little sympathy for the clearly shell-shocked man behind the counter. 

Meanwhile, Bucky wanders off to pick out some sausages. He has some plans brewing in his head by the way of rolls.

 

***

 

They venture into a grocery store, afterwards. Steve dumps the turkey into their shopping cart and pushes it onwards, Bucky by his side.

“It says here,” Bucky says, reading off of his phone, “that we need stuffing, for the turkey.” It’s one of the things Steve had left out, on his otherwise meticulously crafted list. Steve looks momentarily stumped, gazing into the middle distance, which happens to be aisle two. 

“What’s in a stuffing?” Steve wonders aloud.

They both pause. Bucky looks at Steve for a second longer, before he gets his wits about him and dials Sam’s number.

*

Luckily, Sam is already nearby. He arrives ten minutes later wearing an expression not unlike the ones Bucky has seen on him before the raiding of Hydra bases. 

“Alright,” Sam says grimly, smacking the cellophane-wrapped turkey in the cart. “Let’s do this. You got a list?”

Steve hands him his list. Sam scans it for a few moments before nodding approvingly and saying, “Good, good, this is actually much less hopeless than I thought it would be. You’ve got the basics here, turkey, veg, appetisers, deserts – where are your carbs?”

Bucky blinks and says, “What?”

“Your carbs,” Sam repeats, folding the list and putting it in his back pocket. “Most people go for potatoes, but you can also do mac and cheese, or pasta, or whatever else you’re into.”

“I didn’t have any carbs down on there?” Steve asks, bemused.

“No, you didn’t,” Sam sighs, walking down aisle three. Steve and Bucky trail after him. “Come on, it’s one of the major food groups. Is this some dudebro gainz thing? Best believe I meant gainz with a Z, by the way. Are you bulking up? Slimming down? Is desert gonna be protein shakes?”

“I didn’t leave out the carbs on _purpose_ ,” Steve grumbles.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says. “What’s with this, anyway? Doesn’t Tony have people that do Christmas dinner every year? Professional chefs and all that?”

Tony has had the entire Tower covered in trinkets and baubles and fake snow since December 1st. The ‘A’ on the roof has got a Santa hat on it and everything. The other occupants have decorations in their apartments too, as far as Bucky knows. The festive cheer abruptly comes to a halt at Steve and Bucky’s floor of the Tower, where the only thing out of the ordinary is the abundance of blankets Bucky has slowly acquired as the weather started to turn cold around fall time. 

“ _I_ want to do Christmas,” Bucky tells him. “We’re going decoration shopping after this, to get a tree.”

“They’ll give you a matching wreath too if you get it from NYC Trees,” Sam tells him, examining a pack of cranberries and then dropping them in the cart.

“We’re going there,” Bucky decides, pulling the list out of Sam’s pocket and handing it back to Steve “We’re going there, put it on your list.”

“Putting it on the list,” Steve says, dutifully uncapping a pen and scribbling it down, using Bucky’s shoulder to lean on.

“Besides,” Bucky continues, “doesn’t matter what the _professional chefs_ make. I’m gonna cook a turkey and some potatoes and some other things I haven’t decided yet and we’re all going to like them better.”

“No promises,” Sam says breezily, pushing the cart onwards. “I had no idea you had so much Christmas spirit.”

“Always have,” Bucky says with a shrug. “Even when we were celebrating it in the trenches. Just something about the day, you know?”

“We were stationed out in France the Christmas of ’42,” Steve says, getting the, what Sam would call, Tell Me More About the Olden Days Grandpa look on his face. “Buck had us all go around in a circle, tell stories of Christmases back home. No one had even mentioned what day it was, before that. Afterwards though, it was different, the atmosphere. Hopeful, almost.”

Steve’s looking at Bucky, his eyes shining with adoration. Bucky ducks his head, bumps his shoulder into Steve’s chest.

“Sap,” Bucky says. 

Steve grins and then loops his giant arm around Bucky’s metal one, holding him close as they trail through the fresh produce section.

“You two keep making me admit how cute you both are, and it makes it a lot harder to make fun of you,” Sam complains, bagging up some carrots. Bucky plasters himself to Steve’s side, grinning at Sam.

“Which part’s the cutest?” he wonders. “Is it the PDA that’s doing it for you? I want to perfect our technique.”

“More of the tragic war stories,” Sam tells him.

“Don’t lie,” Bucky chides. “Come on, tell me. It ever been more than cute? Do you think we’re hot? Have you been having impure thoughts?”

“Steve,” Sam says, looking to Steve for assistance.

“No, I kind of want to hear the answer,” Steve tells him. Bucky grins.

“Know what? Screw you guys,” Sam says, walking away from them, but still pushing the cart so they know he’s not serious. “I do a favour out of the good of my heart and this is the thanks I get.”

“Aw, Sam,” Bucky calls after him “Don’t be like that. Come back here and we'll make it up to you, we can make the yuletide gay all you like.”

Sam flexes a middle finger in Bucky’s direction and keeps walking.

 

***

 

The tree farm is _beautiful._

It’s started to snow again, lightly, covering the trees in a pretty dusting of it. It crunches beneath their feet, too, with the colours of the fairy lights that are strung around the branches reflecting off of the icy floor. 

“Should we just pick one at random?” Steve asks, glancing around at the variety of trees, looking overwhelmed. “They all look the same to me.”

“No, we’re not going to just _pick one at random_ ,” Bucky tells Steve, offended. “We’re going to make a careful, informed decision and find the right tree for us.”

“The right tree for you,” Sam says, “is the one that requires the least amount of walking around this tree farm.”

Bucky dismisses him with a wave of his hand. “You call the others and tell them we’re doing Christmas at Steve and I’s place this year. Let me worry about the tree.”

Sam sighs, getting his phone out and dialling. 

Bucky looks up at a fir, considering. Steve stands beside him and pretends to be equally as interested, which is all Bucky can ask of Steve, really. 

“Yeah, not a word of a lie, the iron fist of Hydra is purchasing fairy lights as we speak,” comes Sam’s voice from a few feet away, on the phone. Bucky glares in his direction. Sam smiles sweetly at him. 

They trail along a little further, and at some point, Steve takes Bucky’s hand as they stroll, and Bucky pretends to not hear Sam blatantly making fun of him on the phone to Natasha.

And then, Bucky spots the tiniest potted tree, complete with miniature star. As he gasps, he’s pretty sure he nearly crushes Steve’s fingers, but Steve doesn’t complain.

“Steve,” he says, tugging him closer and revealing the many other miniature potted trees lined up along the trail. “Steve, we’re getting these. We’re getting ten.”

“Plus the big tree?” Steve asks, sounding amused. 

“Plus the big tree,” Bucky nods.

“And the wreath,” Sam calls. “Don’t forget about that.”

“And the wreath,” Bucky agrees, nodding determinedly. It’s about to be like a festive fucking forest in their apartment.

 

***

 

On Christmas Day, Bucky spends an insane number of hours in the kitchen. He had known it was going to be work, but he is quickly realising that the sheer effort of making Christmas dinner isn’t something one can fully appreciate until you’re in the moment and you’ve got a hand filled with breadcrumbs and dried cranberries stuffed inside a turkey and your boyfriend is taking pictures of you and giggling like it’s baby’s first Christmas and you’re the baby.

”You could use a spoon,” Steve tells him, elbows on the counter, phone in his hands, _recording_ now. 

Bucky looks down at his bread-crumbed hand. He – he could have. He could totally have just used a spoon and he has no idea why he didn’t think of it, but he refuses to believe Steve hadn’t had the thought the second Bucky had got his first fistful of stuffing and then decided to get a few good shots of the spectacle before commenting. “You could quit taking shots of me to use as drawing references later and _help_ ,” Bucky bites back, though without venom. 

“You don’t like me helping when you cook,” Steve says, shutting off the camera finally and setting it down. “You say it disrupts your method.”

He’s not wrong. Steve tends to sort of float behind him like a shadow, because Bucky is what some might call a disaster in the kitchen, in that he doesn’t believe in cleaning as he goes. Steve's help includes picking up after him, and disorganising Bucky’s organised mess. Sometimes, Bucky _knows_ he dropped an onion on the floor, he _saw_ it, okay, and he’ll be coming back to get it when he needs it for the omelette in about fifteen minutes, so Steve needs to leave it there until Bucky’s ready for it.

“I’ll disrupt your method,” Bucky grumbles for lack of anything else to say that he hasn’t said a thousand times already. Steve doesn’t say anything, and when Bucky glances up at him he’s smiling dopily like he’s a giant golden retriever and Bucky’s a large and particularly appetising treat. 

“Jesus, save some of that drool for the meal, Rogers,” Bucky says, head ducking again so Steve doesn’t see his flushed face.

Steve chuckles, all warm and bass boosted. It makes Bucky light up every time he hears it. “It’s a mess in here,” he says then, as if Bucky doesn’t already know.

“It’s all a part of my process,” Bucky tells him, peeling a potato. The peelings land on the ground, and Steve looks mildly pained, but Bucky’s going to clean it up _afterwards_ , so Steve needs to stop being a baby. “I don’t complain when you leave your paintbrushes all over the ground and your sketchbooks everywhere.”

“A paintbrush on the ground is a lot different to what I’m looking at right now. It’s like a bomb went off,” Steve says, stepping over the jumbo bag of carrots that are on the floor somehow and picking up his own knife to start peeling. 

“Really, Steve,” Bucky says, not looking up. “You and I have both seen several bombsites in our lifetimes, definitely more than is healthy. This swanky upper-class penthouse kitchen in Midtown Manhattan with three miniature Christmas trees in it looks like one just because there’s some peelings on the floor?”

“Peel into the sink at the very least,” Steve asks of him.

Bucky sighs long-sufferingly and turns towards the sink, earning a satisfied hum from Steve who is evidently pleased that Bucky seems to be domesticating nicely.

 

***

 

At three pm, Bucky finally finds out what eggnog is, and is equal parts disgusted and intrigued when Steve googles it for him and announces that it’s a mixture of egg and cream and booze. He makes some anyway. Everyone’s due to get here in about a half hour, and Sam arrives first, when Bucky’s on his third glass.

Sam is wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater Bucky has ever seen in his life, but Bucky knows better than to comment on it. Steve, however, as is a known fact, has no such self-preservation instincts to speak of.

“Nice sweater,” Steve laughs, flicking one of the honest to God actual jingle bells on the front.

Sam turns a Look in Steve’s direction. “I know the Under-Armour posterchild isn’t trying to question _my_ fashion choices.”

Bucky sniggers into his eggnog.

The chin of defiance makes itself known. “What’s wrong with Under Armor?” Steve asks, not sounding unlike a petulant child. Sam doesn’t deign to respond, walking into their kitchen and then letting out a whistle as he comes across the spread on their dining table. Bucky’s pleased at what is practically glowing commendation coming from Sam, trotting in after him.

“Everything look good?” Bucky asks.

“Try amazing. How long have you been cooking for?”

“Seven hours,” Bucky announces.

“How many glasses have you drank?” Sam wonders.

“Three,” Bucky says, taking another sip. “Can’t get drunk but I’m sure as hell gonna try my hardest.” 

“Well pour it up,” Sam tells him, getting a glass out of the cabinet, “it’s Christmas.” 

Bucky grins because it _is_ , and it finally feels like it. Steve slinks up behind him, arms looping around Bucky’s waist to press a kiss to his jaw, the beard of iniquity making another star appearance. Bucky leans into it, blissful.

**Author's Note:**

> bucky for this entire fic: we're going to have ourselves a merry little fucking christmas alright???


End file.
